Tuesday, March 14, 2006

ILL

One of the books I requested on interlibrary loan (ILL) has arrived from Colorado State University. It’s called THE PUBLIC CULTURE OF THE VICTORIAN MIDDLE CLASS: Ritual and Authority and the English Industrial City 1840-1914 (2000) and it’s by Simon Gunn.

The author theorizes that the classical music concert was one of the most important social rites among the wealthy during the second half of the 19th century. As with so much of public culture it was designed in part to distinguish between groups and classes.

There’s much more to the book, of course and I look forward to mining it for information that will help me better understand Trollope’s novels and the world he was describing therein. I haven’t read an academic book like this one for a while. I wonder if I still remember how.